With the new Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker benchmark, players can make the bunny boy of their dreams before the new expansion release later this year. Endwalker will finally introduce the ability to play as a male Viera, a predominantly female-only race in previous games.
After much discussion and feedback from fans, Final Fantasy XIV Director Naoki Yoshida (“Yoshi-P”) is finally bringing male Viera to the world of Final Fantasy XIV. This is a big deal because male Viera have never been seen in the Final Fantasy world prior to now.
According to Final Fantasy lore in the old games and a few dialogue entries taken from the Wandering Dramaturge NPC in Final Fantasy XIV, male Viera serve as protectors of the forest and they do not reside with female Viera. Male Viera only come into contact with the females residing in the village to train, fight, and mate. The Viera are an iconic race appearing in the world of Ivalice—namely Final Fantasy XII and the Final Fantasy Tactics series—and in the world of Final Fantasy XIV, they reside in the Golmore Jungle.
According to Yoshi-P, bringing Viera into FFXIV at all was off-limits at first, due to limiting complications in graphics (character modeling, hairstyles, helmets, etc.); in fact, Viera still can’t wear most headpieces in the game. This is an issue that the team is currently working on to fix.
A male Viera in Final Fantasy XIV
The purpose of the recently released benchmark is to allow players to test that their PC can handle the game without complications. During the cutscenes that appear in the benchmark, a hardware performance score will be displayed. Any score above 8000 indicates the player is good to go, but anything below that might mean FPS issues. PCs with a lower benchmark score should run the game on a lower setting to minimize gameplay issues.
Besides the performance test, the real fun can be found in the character creation menu. There are several unique slider adjustments for the Viera race such as ear sliders, height, and a remarkably feminine set of style choices.
If players choose to make a male Viera in the benchmark, they will be able to export it into the main game once the Endwalker expansion goes live in November, so there are several months to spend time making adjustments to create the perfect character. When finalizing changes in the character creator menu, be sure to click “Yes” on the “Save appearance data?” prompt! It’s important to note that any character created in the benchmark can be exported to the main game.
Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker is set to release November 19, 2021, but players can pick up the benchmark now at the Square Enix website. Downloading the benchmark will not conflict with the currently installed version of the game. Read more about the Endwalker announcement and catch up on the latest Final Fantasy XIV Liveletter.
